It was, Margaret thought, one of the prettiest houses and parks she had ever seen.
And it was home. /She/ was home. /They/ were.
Duncan's clasp on her hand was almost painful.
Neither of them spoke.
If he had come alone, as he had intended, Duncan thought, he would have prowled about the house, looking for what was familiar, what was not, trying to recapture the presence of his father in the library, of his mother in the morning room and drawing room, standing at the window of his old bedchamber, looking down the steep slope behind the house to the river and across it to the wide, straight, laburnum-shaded grass avenue, which ended with the summer house and views of fields and meadows and woods in every direction. He would perhaps have strolled along the portrait gallery, viewing the old family portraits through adult eyes.
He would have spent the evening slouched in a chair, perhaps in the drawing room, more probably in the library, reading a book.
Reveling in the feeling of being home where he belonged.
At last.
It had been a long, weary exile – much of it self-imposed. He had gone away to sow some wild oats, and he had stayed away because he had stepped past the invisible but nonetheless real boundary between wild oats and that barren land that stretched beyond the pale. For five years he had yearned to be here with a gnawing ache of longing.
Oh, he might have paid a visit now and then, he supposed. But there had been no leaving Laura, even with the Harrises, whom she knew and trusted. A few times he had gone away for a night or two just because he had needed some time to himself, some semblance of a life of his own.
But each time he had been sorry when he returned. Not that she had railed at him. She had never done that. She had always … loved him. Yes, that /was/ the correct word, though it had not, of course, been a romantic love. And she had needed him. Oh, how she had needed him!
It should have felt good to be needed.
It had not.
Poor Laura.
He had loved her too. /Not/ with a romantic or sexual love.
He had not come here alone now, alas. He had brought a wife with him.
He showed her the house after their arrival and marveled at how little it had changed in six years. Why had he expected that it would have done? Any orders for change would have had to come from him – or from his grandfather.
He could not dislike Maggie, he found, even though he had half expected to. She was sensitive and compassionate. Good Lord, she had insisted upon having Toby in their home as if he were a legitimate son of the house. It was not just that, though.
It was … Well, he did not know what it was. "You have not seen the gallery yet," he told her as they sat together at a late dinner, one at the head and one at the foot of the dining room table, from which the butler had had the forethought to remove all the extra leaves so that they were not a great distance apart. "It is best seen in the daylight. I will show it to you tomorrow, if you wish." "Are all your family portraits there?" she asked. "It is an interesting gallery," he said. "All the main family portraits are at Wychen Abbey, my grandfather's country home. But all the marquesses for the past seven generations grew up here, just as I did, and so the portraits of them as children and young men are here, as well as portraits of all their other family members, of course. It is a cheerful place. I was an only child and did not always have the company of other children, though my cousins were forever coming for extended stays. I spent a great deal of time in the gallery, especially in wet weather. My pictured ancestors were my playmates. I weaved stories about them and me." She was smiling. "It must be lovely," she said, "to have an ancestral home, to have that connection with your own roots and with those who went before you." "It is," he said. "There is a wonderful portrait of my grandfather when he was fifteen or sixteen, astride a horse and bending down to scoop up a shaggy little dog. And another of him as a young man with my grandmother, my father an infant on her knee." She smiled along the length of the table at him. "I shall so enjoy looking at those particular paintings," she said. "Oh, Duncan, he loves you very dearly. I am going to persuade him to come here before the winter." "He has not been here," he said, "since my father died – fifteen years ago." "Then it is time he came again," she said. "We will see to it that he replaces those sad memories with happier ones." /We will be happy, then/? he almost said aloud. "If you can persuade him," he said, "you will be a miracle worker." "Watch me," she said, laughing. "Shall I leave you alone to your port?" It would have seemed mildly eccentric of him when they had no company.
Besides, he did not want to sit alone – strange, really, when he had been dreaming of returning here by himself. "We will retire to the drawing room," he said, getting to his feet and going to draw back her chair, "and have tea brought there. Or coffee?" "Tea, please," she said, and he looked at the butler and raised his eyebrows. "And that," he said as he led her toward the drawing room, her arm drawn through his, "was gauche of me, Maggie. I should have left the ordering of the tea tray to you. You are not a guest in my home, are you? You are my wife." "How improper it would be," she said, laughing again, "if I were only a guest. I /will/ pour the tea, however." Which she proceeded to do as soon as the tray arrived in the drawing room. He watched her, poised and elegant and beautiful. Still a stranger. Was it inevitable in any new marriage? Was it possible to know any woman in advance of living in intimacy under the same roof with her?
He had courted Caroline for several months before offering her marriage, and they had been betrothed for several more months. And yet he had not known her at all until very close to the wedding. And even then, he supposed, he had not completely known her – only one fact about her that had repelled him.
Perhaps it did not matter that he had known Maggie for less than three weeks. "It /is/ awkward, is it not?" she said into a rather lengthy silence as they sipped their tea. "The silence?" he said. "I could keep talking," she said. "So could you. But not forever. What /do/ we talk about, Duncan?" "What do you talk to your brother about?" he asked her. "And your sisters?" She was looking directly at him. "I am not really sure," she said. "With strangers and even acquaintances I can keep a conversation going indefinitely. It is a part of being polite, is it not? With my family I do not have to make conversation.
They talk, I talk – we do not have to make any effort to find topics. They just happen." "And are you ever silent with your family?" he asked.
She thought. "Yes, often," she said. "Silence can be companionable. It can be that even with close friends." "I am neither family nor a close friend, then?" he asked her.
She stared back at him. "You /are/ the one and must be both," she said. "But can friendship be forced, Duncan? Or the /ease/ of friendship?" He was feeling a little shaken, if the truth were known. He had not been finding the silence uncomfortable. If he had been, he would have filled it with some form of conversation. He had spoken a great deal about his home and family and childhood, for example, since their arrival. But he had not asked her anything about her own life. Those details would have filled the rest of the evening.